So it's raining, the kids are asleep and my girlfriend is at work...
 

So, what does $100T2 do then?

This:

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...3/P4140014.jpg

Before is on the left, after is on the right.

Nothing like a boring Friday night at home with a disassembled rear-end, 80 grit, and an electric sander. 22 years of grit, grease, and filth sure makes for a lot of work.

Evening well spent!

Yours didnt even look too bad before! Before I got mine sandblasted they were absolutely gross, you couldnt tell they were ever black. Seeing those I wish I had taken a picture lol. I think if you clearcoated those theyd probably actually look prety nice, whats the plan? are you going to paint them?

Man....

You have way too much time on your hands.

It does look pretty though! you gonna put mirrors on the ground when you park?

Nice work man. I did my spare tranny and rear end too, but I used the angle grinder with a wire wheel on it. Takes that junk off in no time, and shines it up like its been polished. Keep up the good work, you'll have a "new" car in no time! :)

^^ lol

Looking good.

Yeah, I'm going to paint them a nice gloss black. Same with my rear-end, calipers, etc. I'm going to repaint my blue shocks red to match the RB springs, and to break up the black a bit. Other than that, just trying to get her as clean and nice as possible.

I don't have the patience for all that sanding and grinding, that's why I built my own blast cabinet. As cleans as your's started, less than 10 minutes in the cabinet, and I get to stay clean and not breath all the dust.

Good job, and you do seem to have a lot of time on your hands, are you the hausfrau?

groovy, you doing anything with the rear end itself? i'd like to sandblast mine and paint it all up since ya, the rust on mine looks almost as bad as your old one did. hehe

Nein, ich bin nicht die hausfrau.

I just found out my air compressor will support a sandblaster, so it's go time as soon as I buy that.

I painted the rear-end with high temp paint, but now I'm thinking of blasting it and repainting it.

LOL. My German is 30+ years old, and I actually understood that.

I had to think about it... It's been 17 years since German class.

Alright, I have a sandblasting gun, 150 pounds of sand, and two hours to kill. Here goes nothin'.

Pics to follow.

Man Hurry Up Your Taking Forever..... ;)

Goo! I wish I still had my shop, With my two hours to kill before work its spent playing halo, and riding the longboard

Lol. Machen Sie einen sandwich fur mich, Weibchen

Sandblasters are invaluable. With a couple hours plus some various polishing devices I got my wheels looking brand-spankin' new.

It's not Weibchen, it's Liebchen. ;)

That sandblaster was kind of a disappointment.

Explain.

wunderbar!! nette arbeit :icon_tup:

^^ cute work?

its been 4 days sence deutsch classe fur mich, meine deutsch ist nicht gut, meine englisch ist nicht besser.

so why is the sandblaster a dissapointment?

that was make a sandwitch for me bitch, not sweetheart. hence the weibchen lol

It kept clogging... I don't know what the deal was. I guess I need to sift it better before using it next time.

If it clogs in the tank, it's moisture, if it's the tip, I use a window screen to sift mine.

It kept clogging in the pickup of the hose. I think I need to sift it better.

Ah, so you're using a siphon feed, yes, filter finer. I have one window screen that never seems to be in the window frame of the shop, it sits next to the blast cabinet.

Yeah, it seems to work on a vacuum. You can also run water or cleaner through it... I used Purple Power on some of the parts yesterday by running it through the gun.

I haven't tried liquids, would work though. Great idea.

I have 3 different sandblasters. The large cabinet I built, the siphon feed that you bought and the pressure tank one. I use the same sand in all of them. This is a river town, so the sand pit is 2 miles from my house. I buy a ton of masons sand at a time, for about 7 bucks. I have very little waste during the screening process buying this way. When I don't buy from the pit, I hit the home centers, buying masons sand in the bag I end up throwing out 1/3-1/2 of it after screening.

If you can find a fine play sand or the white sand like they use in ashtrays, you get a more uniform sand for blasting. On my blast cabinet, I load it with 150-180 lbs of sand at a time. I have a dual bag dust collector, bought for my wood shop tools, hooked up to the cabinet to pull the dust out. Eventually the sand gets so fine it's a dust cloud in the cabinet and it gets tossed on the gravel alley.

The big cabinet uses the same siphon feed blaster. The only change I made, other than plumbing for shop air, was buying Eastwoods carbon steel blasting tip. The tip is $50, but I have been using that same tip for almost 2 years. I can go through a couple of the ceramic tips a day when blasting fulltime.

Making a cabinet is easy with minimal woodwoorking skills. A few tricks on the construction and they work very well. Bottom of cabinet needs to be V shaped, or an inverted pyramid. Door/viewing area should be 1/4" acrylic with a plate glass attached on the inside of the acrylic. Oddly enough the glass resists the sand better than the acrylic. I use aluminum duct tape to attach the glass to the plastic. Regular duct tape doesn't hold as well and leaves too much adhesive when removing to change out the glass.

For gloves, a good pair of chemically resistant ones hold up fairly well. The cheap pvc ones that came with my original cabinet lasted 2-1/2 years. I just replaced mine and didn't want to spend $25 on Eastwoods gloves, so I bought a long pair of chemical gloves and sewed 12" from the leg bottoms of a pair of khaki pants on them for the length I needed. Yes, I can sew, so-so, too.

A decent shop vac is needed to pull the dust out of the cabinet. Hook it up to one end, cut a hole and mount an air filter in the other.

Lighting inside the cabinet is a must. One of those flourescent drop lights work quite well. Regular light bulbs are prone to breakage and getting sand in the threads can make bulb changes difficult.

Last thing needed is a decent source of air. Buy the biggest air compressor you can afford, don't cheap out on this. My 7hp, dual stage, 80 gal. 220v compressor runs about a 50% duty cycle when using the big cabinet when I'm runnung at 100 psi. With a 3 hp, 20 gal. comp., you will be spending half your time waiting for the comp to recharge, that is a pita.

As a side note, sand and moisture don't mix, install a water filter/collector on you air line.

Any other questions, feel free to ask. I can also post pics of my cabinet.

Side note on getting the rest of the rubber out of your control arms, sand will not do it, it's rubber, it just bounces off. A wire wheel and drill will remove the remnants, an 80 grit flap wheel works to a lesser extent.. Where the bushings seat the surface needs to be smooth for long term durability.